919 ›› VOLUNTEER PROFILE
Blessed With Miracles
Lori Moscato Works Everyday to Help Couples Experience the Love of a Child By G. CLEVELAND KILGORE 919 Magazine Writer
Brier Creek Country Club resident Lori Moscato feels extremely blessed. “If you asked me 10 years ago, that this is what would happen and I would be a part of these miraculous lives – I would have said you were crazy,” said Moscato, the founder and chair of the Pay It Forward Fertility Foundation. And it all started with a couple of miracles. “We felt so blessed and fortunate to have two beautiful children, each a miracle in their own way,” Moscato said. “Our daughter Sophia was conceived through In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and then our son Ryan was born 13 months after giving birth to Sophia.” So she and husband Rob decided to “pay it forward” by launching the foundation, with a goal to help reduce the cost of infertility treatment by providing grants and to educate couples about infertility. “We had insurance coverage for all of our medicines and procedures, which is extremely costly. But we are in the minority to have that coverage,” Moscato said. “The original intent was to give a check to our clinic that we used to conceive our daughter. We wanted to help one
couple conceive one child.” That clinic director, Dr. Sameh Toma, turned that donation into an idea of helping a lot of couples and getting a lot of clinics involved, which was the vision of the late Dr. Luther Talbert – who was an IVF pioneer of North Carolina. Now, Moscato and the foundation have expanded nationally – and already have had nine babies born and eight more on the way. Again, she feels blessed. “I get to make the phone calls to the couples who are awarded a grant. Those phone calls never get old and form wonderful relationships,” she said. “To follow their journey and then to potentially hold one of their babies is an experience beyond words and comprehension. To think that there are children now in this world who may not have been here if it were not for our donors and the foundation…leaves me speechless.” Moscato, who originally moved to Raleigh with her family after graduating
Lori Moscato Profile AGE: 36 RESIDENCE: Brier Creek Country Club, Village of Inverness VOLUNTEER AFFILIATION: Pay it Forward Fertility Foundation FAMILY: Husband, Rob; daughter, Sophia (6); son, Ryan (5) PETS: Covey, Duncan, Stella (Labradoodles) INTERESTS: Volunteering, yoga, exercise, reading
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919 Magazine BC
September | October 2013
Lori and husband Robert
Get Tickets to the PIFF Annual Gala, Page 30 high school in Connecticut, attended Meredith College. After obtaining a Business Administration degree, she joined GlaxoWellcome (now GSK) in New Jersey. Three years later, she was married and moved to Brier Creek. “We love our neighborhood because we felt like we got more than a house – we got a home,” she said. “We gained friendships that are like extensions of our family – friendships that will last a lifetime.” Moscato’s daughter is now age 6 and in the 1st Grade at The Franciscan School. Son Ryan turned 5 in March and attends kindergarten at the www.919Magazine.com